going mad (madder than a hatter)
by Exile Wrath
Summary: When genin Sakura dies, a casualty of Orochimaru, deities decide to take a recently dead soul from another world to start her life at the beginning to help Naruto save the world. But... "I spent the first twenty years of that life in the wrong body, so if you expect me to be smiles and sunshine being stuck into a female body again, it's not happening." Trans male OC-insert Sakura
1. down the rabbit hole

**Full Summary:** Sakura dies in that first Chuunin Exam, a casualty of Orochimaru. However, her role is crucial towards Naruto's whole saving-the-world thing, and her current self isn't quite what the deities need to help the Savior advance. So they pull in a recently dead soul from another world, making a deal and bribing the soul into agreeing to rewind back in time and displacing Sakura's soul when she is born. It takes a lot of arguing, but they get him to agree.

Yes, him, because the soul (once, he was Wu Jin An, written with gold and safety. Now he is Raku, written with a comfort that doesn't exist) was a transgender male in his past life, and he isn't very happy having to operate in a girl's body again. To make it worse, it's a completely different universe. "I spent the first twenty years of that life in the wrong body, so if you expect me to be smiles and sunshine being stuck into a female body again, it's not happening."

The transgender male oc-insert Sakura fic no one asked for.

 **Notes:** I've had this story idea for about two years. Finally, it's being published. I never considered actually writing it out (I let it stay an 11k document of rough sketched plot) because of the sheer amount of oc insert Sakura fics out there, this would just be one of the many. I suppose it still is one of the many, but at least it's published lol.

It would have remained just a rough sketch until oblivion, but due to the excitement of my little sister and kei and Ao, here's the first chapter.

* * *

 _down the rabbit hole_

Compared to Zabuza, the danger of facing this strange shinobi was infinitely greater.

Sakura could remember that, being frozen at the sheer killing intent in the air, a dozen images of her possible death swamping her mind and paralyzing her movements with pure fear. But this fight was different.

Sasuke struggled against the Sound-nin in front of her, throwing kunai and shuriken that spun in the air much like the tomoe in his eyes. He didn't look at her at all- not for assistance or to check if she was out of range. Her presence was completely disregarded in exchange for focus on the threat before him and something in Sakura drew back, offended.

 _He thinks I can't help_ , her thoughts snarled, _even though we're teammates, he thinks-_

Well, to be fair, she hadn't done much to prove herself in front of him lately. _Then change it!_ the same inner voice snapped.

So, with her lips pressed in a determined line, Sakura drew a kunai and charged the Sound-nin.

A hand flickered through the air even as the stranger dodged Sasuke's attacks, piercing her defenses and a knife-hand piercing through her chest.

"Oh dear, that was a reflex," the stranger said.

"Katon: Ryuuka no Jutsu," Sasuke bit on the ninja wire, flames racing down as Haruno Sakura fell to the ground-

Dead.

* * *

 _Breathe._ The man reminded himself. _I have no idea where I am, no idea who these kids are-_ He winced as the pink-haired one dropped to the ground, most likely dead, and the other kid collapse to the ground from a bite to his neck. From this distance, their patches of hair was the only thing that let him differentiate who was who.

"So, what's going on?" he asked his silent companion, who had been hovering next to him in the air during the whole conflict. "I would ask where the fuck am I, but considering I just saw three kids get murdered, I'm assuming hell."

Eighty-four eyes turned to him, a beat of six wings turning the being around to bear its full gaze on him. They regarded him with amusement, constantly blinking, others staring at the sky, at least a dozen watching the people a few hundred meters on the ground below them. He managed not to betray how unsettled he was by their appearance, if only just barely.

 **This is not Hell. Or Heaven, for that matter.** The words echoed around Jin An's ears, seeming to come from every direction at once, a voice that was a cross of tolling funeral dirge bells, the roar of a waterfall, and the screech of nails on metal. **This is the mortal plane.**

"Well, okay then. _Why_ am I here then?" he tilted his head in query, looking down at the ground and holding a translucent hand in front of him. "I died, didn't I? I don't remember where I'm from or who I am- but something in my mind tells me that I died."

 **An offer. For you.**

He narrowed his eyes, and turned to the being, meeting the eighty-four eyes with only the slightest internal cringe. "What sort of offer?"

The eyes perceived his discomfort, and he got the faintest sense that they was _amused_ at him. **Resurrection. A return to your life, at the beginning. To have another chance.**

Something tugged at his mind, an emotion that he labelled 'regret'. Did he have many regrets about his life? Probably. It seemed correct to say, at least. "Resurrection at what cost?"

The being looked downwards, two wings ceasing their beating to point pinion feathers sharply at the children they'd witnessed get nearly eviscerated minutes ago. **Haruno Sakura. Twelve. We have ordained the boy Uzumaki Naruto as the Chosen One of this world. Haruno was to be one of his companions to aid his quest. But she has died. What you see here happened in the past.**

He narrowed his eyes at the being. "Where do I come in, then?"

 **Haruno Sakura was unable to survive this trial. Her soul wanders, now. You died at the same time as her, in your plane. Others died at the same time, in all of the different versions of the mortal planes. But you are the most fitting to take her place.**

No mincing words, now. "Why me?"

 **Criteria which you mortals cannot perceive.**

 **You may have a resurrection in your own body after you live in this one. Live in Haruno Sakura's body to take her place in aiding the Chosen One to save the world. Upon your success, we will switch your souls again.**

"Again?"

 **In order to prevent her soul from being lost in the reincarnation cycle, she will live in your body until you succeed or fail. A life for a life. A body for a body. All things must be fair. And it will start in the beginning of her life, and she in your beginning, so that you may be accustomed to this world.**

"So I have to help someone save the world in return for another lease of _my_ life?"

 **Correct.** The being seemed pleased. He didn't like it.

But, there wasn't really any other choice, Jin An figured. Refuse, and be... reincarnated? Agree and- still be reincarnated? _What the hell._ At least, if he agreed, he'd have some sort of knowledge what was going on. "Will I at least remember who I am after I am reborn as that kid?"

 **Yes. Eventually. Babies cannot hold the mind of adults after all.**

He hesitated, and looked at the pink-haired kid on the ground, a splatter of blood in the forest. "She's a girl, judging by the pronoun you're using. I spent the first twenty years of my life in the wrong body, so if you expect me to be smiles and sunshine being stuck in a female body again, it's not happening."

All the eyes blinked at once, giving the sort of impression of a visual scoff. **We expect you to save the world. 'Smiles and sunshine,' as you say, are not required for that.**

He couldn't resist the urge to laugh helplessly at that. "Of course not. What if I fail?"

About thirty or so eyes blinked simultaneously, something akin to amusement in the way wrinkles appeared at the corner of the eyes. **The longer you live in this life, the longer you are guaranteed** _ **your**_ **life. Die young, and you will die at the same age. Die after saving the world, and fate will allow you a long life.**

That was... foreboding. It did make somewhat sense, though. There wasn't really anything that he could argue against, was there? "I agree, then."

* * *

Haruno Sakura was a precious child, bright and loveable. Four years old and happy and smiling as she bounced in the street next to her mother, chattering happily - curiously - about a sight she had seen in the market that they had just gone to. "They were walking on the walls, okaa-san! How do they do that? I tried to walk on the wall earlier and _I_ fell-!"

Her mother, Haruno Mebuki, gave a slightly pained smile at her, unfortunately used to Sakura's antics and ceaseless need to _know_. "I'm not sure, dear. Shinobi can do things normal people can't."

"But shinobi are people too!" Sakura insisted, "They're just a lot more kick-as-"

"Language," Mebuki reminded. Sakura's mouth closed and she tilted her head in confusion. "Little girls shouldn't swear."

Sakura looked up at her mother, face painted over with utter confusion. "But I didn't swear, okaa-san?"

Sometimes, Mebuki wondered exactly where Sakura got her vocabulary from. Surely not her father- Kaito never swore in the house- and surely not her thin children's books. Sakura rarely went outside without her, too, so it couldn't have been from the neighborhood kids. (They lived in a _respectable_ neighborhood, after all.) "Just don't say words like kick-ass, dear," she chided.

The child paused, mouth forming an 'o'. "Okay, okaa-san! Well shinobi are people too, but they're just fucking hardcore, is all-"

Mebuki froze in her steps, turning the full brunt of her shocked gaze on her daughter. "SAKURA!"

"But... I didn't use kick-ass?" was the reply. Sakura didn't understand why okaa-san didn't want her to talk. She wasn't using bad words! She didn't use bad words. Some of her words made okaa-san mad, though. Which didn't make sense, because words were just words and Sakura heard the ones that made okaa-san mad all the time in her dreams so-

Seeing her daughter's face scrunched up in perfect confusion though, Mebuki sighed again. One day, she would find out where her daughter learned her swears from. Not today though. Not now. They were hosting a dinner with some business partners tonight, and she didn't have time to ask Sakura the origin of 'kick-ass' and 'fucking hardcore'. And 'shitstain' and 'asshat' and-

The list made Mebuki want to groan. _I'll just think about it some other time_. "No using," she winced at having to say it herself, "'fuck' or the like, Sakura. Proper little girls don't use that words."

A peculiar expression came across Sakura's face, but it passed away a moment later. "Yes, okaa-san," she said obediently, and lowered her head to look at the ground as they walked.

For some reason, when okaa-san said 'proper little girls', something in Sakura had risen up, dark and snarling and full of old pain. _I am_ _ **not-**_

She shook her head of the strange voice and concentrated on putting her feet in front of each other as she walked, the way that okaa-san insisted that proper little girls walked.

The strange discontent was still in the back of her mind, though.

It wasn't much longer until they arrived home. "Hello, otou-san," she greeted once they entered, voice coming out in a mumble rather than the usual cheer anyone was used to hearing.

Her father raised an eyebrow at this, cup of tea paused at his lips. "Did something happen, Sakura?"

She shook her head, silent, and dragged one of the grocery bags to the kitchen. Haruno Kaito shot his wife a concerned expression, and Mebuki sighed, taking a seat across from him and pouring herself a cup of tea. She waited for Sakura to finish putting some of the food away and head upstairs to her room before opening discussion. "She's a bright girl."

"Of course she is," Kaito agreed, pink hair bobbing as he nodded. "One of my friends in the academy said that if we still wanted to enter her early, we would be able to." Civilian academy, obviously. Thankfully, their only child had never professed an interest in becoming a shinobi, no matter how curious she was about how shinobi could do things.

"She would make a wonderful wife someday," Mebuki added, "her language bothers me, though. No matter how many words I tell her not to use, she keeps coming up with new ones! It's appalling, frankly. And she always says she learned them from her dreams."

Kaito shrugged. "She must have unconsciously picked it up from people when she goes outside."

"She doesn't go outside often."

A wince. "Well, she'll grow out of it, surely? She's only four, after all. The Batsumo heir throws tantrums and doesn't behave at etiquette lessons, I hear. I would rather deal with Sakura's swearing rather than deal with tantrums."

Mebuki sighed with a sort of helpless agreement. "I suppose you're right, dear. I'll just have to keep teaching her what not to say. Her language, my goodness..."

It never quite occurred to them that most of the time, they had to teach Sakura what _not_ to say rather than what to say.

* * *

She was in the City again.

Sakura flailed a bit on the sidewalk as people streamed around her, going their different ways with all their different lives. It was hard to dodge their legs, especially as no one seemed to notice her.

With great difficulty, she weaved through the crowd, occasionally looking upwards at the grand constructs all around her. The City was always so much _different_ than Konoha. Buildings as tall as the Hokage Tower everywhere, except made of metal like knives were. Glass in big windows that showed into shops with clothes and foods she couldn't see walking down the marketplace with her mother. Outfits called 'suits' that people like her otou-san wore, except otou-san wore haori and hakama when doing his formal meetings. Suits looked much nicer, in Sakura's opinion.

She wondered why no one in Konoha wore suits. Maybe because it wasn't as cold in Konoha as the City?

Colors, too. Konoha was full of the brown of roof-tiles and the dirt road- nothing like the shiny grey steel roofs or the black asphalt here. Bright lights everywhere, shining on massive advertisements for expensive products. Even the people! Everyone in Konoha looked a little alike, with brown or black hair and pale skin. Some people had darker skin, or had strange hair like Sakura's own pink. But here, people came in more shades than she could count, and there was red brown yellow black _everywhere_. They wore strange clothes, like fat jackets with fat fur hoods and some blue pants called jeans.

Pinching her pale yellow sleeping-dress, Sakura looked at a woman walking by, in her own comfortable fat jacket and jeans. She wished she could wear them too.

Eventually, she found herself in front of the Bar. "So it's a Bar dream!" she realized aloud, a bit belatedly. She knew that that hot-dog vendor was familiar! She always passed him when coming to the Bar.

The Bar was named Moonshine Fountain, judging by the silvery curling script on its windows. It was easier to call it the Bar, though. All of her dreams took place in either the City or the Town, and most of the City dreams led her to the Bar, or to the Apartment, with some exceptions.

Darting in behind someone, Sakura hopped onto a table just as a beer bottle smashed on the wall next to her. "You missed, you bastard!" someone yelled gleefully.

"Watch my fist miss your pretty face, son of a bitch Jin!"

Sakura's eyes fixed on the man in the center of the Bar, the man she always dreamt about. He was laughing as someone charged him, a portly round man whose face was red with either alcohol or anger. Both, Sakura guessed.

Jin An threw his head back to finish his shot-glass, and slid out of the way quite easily. "Missed again, Frank!" Another roar, and this time all it took was a flick of a wrist and Jin An sent him sprawling into another table, knocking over several drinks and causing two people to get to their feet with displeased expressions. Sakura put her hands on her knees and smiled at the scene. A Bar fight, something she wasn't unfamiliar with. All the Bar fights were a little different, but they all ended the same- Jin An standing strong and dancing out into the City, laughing and smiling and _happy_.

Sakura had to tilt her head when another beer bottle flew past her head, concentrating on the whirlwind of fists and kicks and elbows. Watching him fight was always nice. It was mindless, easy and entertaining, and-

"You shouldn't be here, kid," someone said.

Sakura blinked and turned to the side. Jin An stood there, looking at her with crossed arms and a non-expression. She looked back at the fight, and he was there too, long hair snapping through the air with his snap-kicks and dislocating of people's arms. Looked again at the one next to her and asked, "Why are there two of you, ojii-san?"

Wu Jin An- Jin An for short, smiled down at her. "Because this is a dream, of course. And dreams don't make sense, do they Sakura?"

He was right, they never did. Sometimes she dreamt of Jin An when he was a little girl like her, sometimes a young boy who hated his body, sometimes an adult, comfortable and calm and at ease with his life. She hopped down from the table, and put her hand in his offered one.

They stepped back outside into the City, and the world shifted, colors and laughter and crashes blurring into nothing before reforming around them again, to something different. Only Jin An stayed the same.

They were in the Town now, in the House. Sakura hated dreaming about the House, she always felt cold there. Jin An always looked awful, too. Looking up at him again, she observed his expression to see if he was unhappy as the younger him usually was. His face gave away nothing.

The younger Jin An had short hair in a bob, and was loud and energetic outside the House, but quiet and withdrawn when in the House. Sakura shook her head of the memories, and tugged on Jin An's arm. He tilted his head at her, and she held up her arms to be picked up.

He took a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, but bent down to put an arm around her, Sakura grabbing his collar to be secure. "You know, I used to be a girl," he said, gesturing to the tiny Jin An standing in a skirt his mother had made him wear, "But I figured out later," the dream-world changed again, and Jin An had a ponytail and wore pants and a uniform shirt, laughing in the halls of the Middle School, "that I didn't like being a girl, and I wanted to be a boy instead."

A finger bopped her on the nose, and Sakura went cross-eyed for a moment before turning to look at him in the eyes. He had brown eyes, and sometimes they were hard and unforgiving like stones, but now they were warm and... gentle, like sand on the beach. "Oh," she said, something _connecting_. "Is that why I don't like it when okaa-san wants me to be a proper little girl?"

Jin An smiled, pleased, and set her down. "Of course, Sakura. We _are_ the same person, after all."

Sakura looked at him, tall and sharp and handsome in a way she wanted to be like. Long brown hair in a high ponytail that reached to his waist and swung with his movements. His eyes were sharp and keen, and he wore the clothes she- wished she could find in Konoha to wear.

"We are, ojii-san?" she asked.

Jin An patted her pink hair softly. "Not yet, but soon. Once you remember everything."

"Everything?"

"Give it another year or so, kid." He paused as the dream melted away at the edges, "And be a bit careful on your midnight walks, okay?"

"But how did you-" Sakura woke up with the words on her lips, reaching for a person that wasn't by her side.

It took a few minutes for her to readjust from her dream of the City to her plain bedroom. Wood instead of metal, warm Konoha air instead of the wintery biting chill of the City.

It was simple, routine even, to stealthily make her way out of her house, wincing at the squeaky fourth step on the way downstairs. Sometimes she couldn't escape the house, because her parents were still awake and would hear that squeak, but tonight she could leave through the front door instead of the other, more difficult tree-route.

Sliding on her outside shoes, Sakura quietly closed the front door behind her as she left the house for wanderings around Konoha, to wherever her feet would take her. She wanted to- needed to clear her head after her dreams, sometimes. Just to remember that she was living in Konoha, and not the City or the Town.

Konoha didn't have suit-shops or metal buildings or hot-dog vendors after all.

* * *

It was a year later, and whilst other children played shinobi and hung on to their parents, Sakura loved to do nothing more than dream and read.

Dreaming always made her feel a bit better. Like there were pieces of her scattered in her dreams, and she was running around to collect them! Sometimes a second jii-san would be there to talk to her and explain things, not just the Jin An that the dreams always centered on. She had asked him about it once, and jii-san had looked sad.

"You'll remember eventually, kid."

Jii-san always called her 'kid', never by name- he called everyone by name except her. Which was weird, but jii-san was always a bit weird. Sad all the time, even if he liked to hide it with a smile and poke her nose.

That year, and Mebuki was confused by her daughter, who had disavowed wanting to be a 'proper little girl' a while ago and was starting to grow out her hair. Disagreements had sprung up, about what Sakura wanted to wear and wanted to walk, but Kaito had assured her it was "just a phase." God, she hoped so.

A year after her jii-san had told Sakura, "Give it another year or so," and she marked it off on her calendar before pulling up her blankets to her chin and turning over to sleep.

The first thing she felt was _warmth_. Undescribable warmth, and Sakura knew where this dream was immediately. "Mi-nii!" she cried, bounding through the apartment and plopping herself on the couch next to Jin An. "Mi-nii" was curled on the couch on the other side of Jin An, reading on his phone while Jin An muttered something about idiot characters.

Jii-san walked up to them, standing behind the couch. Turning from Jin An's screen to jii-san position, she caught the same look of melancholy the man always wore whenever she had a dream about "Mi-nii". She called him Mi-nii, except his name was Ivanov Mikhail, a Russian with red hair and green eyes a shade darker than Sakura's own.

Mikhail was warm, dreams with him were always warm and made Sakura wake up happy and floating. "He made my apartment somewhere to come home to," jii-san had explained long ago, when she first dreamt of him. "That's why you feel that way."

Sakura wanted to meet someone that made her floating and happy like Mikhail someday, but there weren't any redheads in Konoha. She had asked, once, if any people had red hair like the ones in her dreams, and the obaa-san that ran okaa-san's favorite fish stall had looked sad for a moment before saying that they were all gone. But that was okay! Maybe she'd meet someone, they just wouldn't look like Mikhail.

Something in her chest always stung at that thought, though.

"I can't believe this asshole," Mikhail muttered, nudging Jin An's arm with his head. "She should just get the fuck over him, already. Kishimoto is just killing her development like this."

"What happened in Naruto now, Mikail?" Jin An asked, a patient tone that indicated he had heard similar complaint _many_ times before.

Sakura craned her neck to see what Mikhail was now showing Jin An, but jii-san tapped her on the shoulder. "Let's go somewhere else," he said, expression blank.

"But I want to stay with Mi-nii!"

"No, kid, you don't need to see what happens next-"

The conversation behind them was cut off with a groan, and Sakura turned back around to- Jin An on top of Mikhail? They were laughing together, and-

Jii-san made an undignified sort of choking noise and grabbed her, lifting her from the couch and clapping a hand over her eyes. "Hey!"

"You'll remember later! And it'll be okay when you remember! But not now, you're still a kid-" jii-san blabbered as he ran from the room, through the apartment door. "Time to wake up, not remember my sex life-"

She woke up alert, an unnerving sort of energy filling her body and led to her sliding out of her bed, walking quietly over to her drawers to pull out the one pair of pale purple pants she had managed to persuade her okaa-san to buy for her, and yank on a long-sleeved shirt over her sleeping dress.

"That was a weird dream. Why couldn't I have stayed?" she wondered aloud. Shrugging, (there was no point in dwelling on jii-san's behavior) Sakura paused in front of her door, shaking her head after a careful moment of consideration. _The squeaky step might give me away._

She turned to her bed instead, clambering back up and carefully pulling up the window next to it. She winced at the grating sound, but fortunately it seemed that neither of her parents heard it or paid attention.

Sakura's room was on the second story of their house, facing their backyard. She gauged the distance between her windowsill and a convenient nearby tree branch. Normally, she would sneak out through the front door at night, but tonight something suggested that that route was a bad idea. So backyard and around the house it was.

A leap- clumsy, her foot nearly catching on the windowsill- and Sakura had to bite back an 'oof' as she landed on the tree bough stomach-first. She hung there for a moment, trying to catch her breath, and inched her way towards the trunk, for the trusty route of close branches and leaves that she could get close enough to the ground to drop without breaking anything.

Another "oof" later and she had dropped four feet from the lowest branch to the ground, getting to her feet and dusting her clothes off. She darted behind the tree a second later when her mother opened the backdoor, drawn by the noise, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed again.

Walking as quickly and silently as possible, Sakura through the garden, crawling on top of a bonsai plant rather than risk the gate creaking on her, jumping over and managed to safely land on the ground, in the street.

She had no idea where to go, honestly. Night time was exploring, and exploring meant letting her feet take her wherever they felt like.

Konoha at night was much quieter than the City at night. If anything, the City seemed busier at night, with bright lights that outshone the stars and endless foot-traffic that Konoha only matched during great festivals. Occasionally there were soft thuds on the roofs, shinobi travelling on buildings for patrol or simply as a quicker route.

Maybe she'd try to find a shinobi tonight. She never did manage to find out how they could walk on walls, after all.

* * *

 _The Rusty Kunai_ was like the Bar in her dreams, but smaller. And less glass. Which made sense, because shinobi were much more dangerous than the Bar patrons. Laughter was mixed with melancholy as men and women drank together, some in uniform and others weary strange clothing Sakura didn't even would be seen in the City. They all seemed so tired, like laughter was more of a learned response than genuine amusement.

Pushing the observation to the side (it was weird, sometimes she felt like jii-san was talking to her even when she was awake) Sakura stepped in to the bar, looking around the room for a shinobi who wasn't drinking or talking.

"Hey, kid, what are you doing here?" The words and tone are so familiar that Sakura immediately turns around, eyebrows furrowing as she stared up at the man that had talked to her.

"Since when did you have blond hair and blue eyes, jii-san?" only to be followed a second later with, "Wait, you're not jii-san!"

* * *

Yamanaka Inoichi stared down at the kid that had been blocking his usual seat. She has pink hair, and wide green eyes. They couldn't be natural. Except she was clearly about Ino's age so... they had to be natural. What the heck. "I am not your jii-san, kiddo, and what are you doing here? A bar isn't a place for kids. You're too young."

"I'm five," she said defensively, and holy shit she _was_ the same age as Ino. "And you said the exact same thing as jii-san does whenever I'm in the Bar. Your hair is a lot like his, too."

"And who's your jii-san?" he asked, crouching down in front of her. "Whoever he is, he needs to keep better tabs on his kids."

The girl hesitated, and she tilted her head in thought. "Jii-san is jii-san," she settled on saying. Before Inoichi could respond, she hastily added, "But that's not important! I was looking for shinobi tonight because I have a super important question!"

Inoichi moved around her and plopped onto his regular chair, waving for a waiter to order a decent sake. Interestingly enough, the kid crawled onto the chair in front of him, eyes with with expectation. "What's your super important question, kid?" he figured to humour the child a little. It wouldn't hurt to answer this question whilst he drank his sake before beginning a game of 20 questions to figure out how to take the girl back to wherever she lived.

Her entire face lit up with joy. "How do shinobi walk on walls?" she demanded. "Is it because you're all fucking badass? Because I want to walk on walls too."

It was a good thing that the sake was only halfway to his lips, otherwise Inoichi was sure he probably would have spat it out. As neatly-dressed as the girl was, he hadn't been expecting alley-kid language from her at all. He choked down his amusement and confusion with a sip of sake, and set the dish back down. "We are pretty badass. Most of us, that is." She nodded patiently, as if she had been expecting this. "But no, it's because of a chakra-channelling technique we all learn as genin."

Her head tilted again, "Chakra? Genin?" definitely a civilian. Red light district, maybe? "What are-"

"Heeey, Inoichi!" someone called, drowning out her question, "Guess who Asuma has a big fat crush ooon!" Looking over at the bar, Inoichi made eye contact with Genma, who was clearly tipsy, and hanging off of Asuma's shoulder.

"Shut up, Genma-"

"Kurenai," the name dropped from the girl in front of him, and a strange, blank expression came over her face, startlingly different from the previous curious vivacity. Inoichi stiffened at the change, suppression jutsu coming to his mind just in case-

The kid gave a massive yawn, and her head went 'thunk' on the table.

He blinked, once, twice, and sent a flicker of chakra to check on her mental state. One of the smaller Yamanaka jutsus, best for making sure that unconscious prisoners were truly unconscious. A second later and he knew that yes, the strange-ass kid was asleep. Deep asleep and dreaming, by the looks of it. _Weird_.

All well. He settled for throwing a jacket on her as a blanket before waving over some other jounin to talk to before he left and dragged the kid to wherever she was from.

* * *

"You're here early," jii-san said, head resting on the side of the bathtub, sitting on the floor. "Too early."

Sakura stared at him, right hand tightly clutching her hair from the sudden ache in her head. "Jii-san? What's happening? What are you doing?"

He smiled at her, a different smile from his usual gentle ones. This wasn't even a gentle smile that was hiding his hurting, this was broken and jagged like the glass in his hand- the jagged cuts on his wrist that bled freely into the bathwater. "Come here, kid," he murmured, a bloody hand lifting itself from the water and reaching towards her.

She froze, watching the water drip to the bathroom tiles red with blood, running down his arm and staining his sleeves. Blood dripping from his wrist, three perfect horizontals that she reached for, unable to control her own body-

And then he was leaning on the tub again, wrists in the water and calm as he bled. No, not calm, calm meant your emotions were still and quiet, _this_ was not calm. Dead inside, heart frosted over by ice, and he didn't know if the numbness was from the blood loss or-

Jin An gasped and Sakura gasped, together, vision darkening at the edges, a horrible _loneliness_ creeping at the back of their mind. "Soon," they said in tandem, and Sakura-

 _Connected_. _The dreams weren't dreams, they were my- our memories_ , she thought he thought, experiences as _Wu Jin An_ and _Haruno Sakura_ overlapping, blending at the edges, his mother's disappointment overlapping with her mother's expectations, his father's stoicism with her father's casual air, his consuming loneliness and her-

 _Their_ loss, because Wu Jin An became Haruno Sakura, and Haruno Sakura had been Wu Jin An before made a deal with a being that had eighty-four eyes and six wings and a voice that didn't belong on earth. They were one and the same, and-

Jin An gasped, "If there is a next life, I want to love you again."

Sakura gasped, "That was our end, and this is our beginning."

The child woke up screaming.

 _NOT SAKURA, NOT SAKURA, NOT ME. I DIED, I DIED, I MADE A DEAL BUT NOW I CAN'T SEE HIM AGAIN AND WHY DID I MAKE THAT DEAL HE'S DE-_ raced through his mind like a bad record on repeat, Jin An falling to the floor and clutching his head as this five-year-old body struggled to connect all the broken fragments of his memories from his dreams, screaming with the physical pain and the old one, the wound that he'd forgotten in some part of himself and ripped open just now-

He's only faintly aware at the commotion around him, of people crowding around and strong arms lifting up his tiny body and meeting the night air, an upward leap and the thud of feet on roof-tile, a shinobi racing with him as fast as possible somewhere. "It'll be okay, the hospital-"

"I died," he only barely manages to wheeze, "I died I'm dead but I'm-"

"You're alive, kid. Trust me on that one."

He wanted to protest, to show the stranger his wrists as proof, but these were the wrists of a child, not the sliced ones of a suicidal adult. "I-"

"What's your name?" the shinobi cut him off, "I'm Inoichi Yamanaka, like boars in the mountain and..." he tuned him out, recognizing the calming tactic for what it was, even in the midst of his migraine.

 _A name. A name. Haruno Sakura is dead, she died a long time ago. I can't use my name, I can't- Sa Ku Ra was hers, if I change the syllablles and delete one I-_ "Raku," he said, words unfamiliar in his mouth but the character tracing itself in his head along with memories of years of calligraphy lessons, "Raku, like comfort-" as his vision distorted one more time, a choked yell ripping itself from his throat, his last thoughts ran.

 _Raku, like a comfort that doesn't exist._

 _At least... not yet..._

 _I'll have to help save the world to find it._

* * *

 **Exile** : holy crap it's happening ahh, I never thought it would.

Just in case for anyone thrown off by the thought pattern/behavioral switch of Sakura when she was 'dreaming' and right after she was dreaming, her sudden vocabulary set can be attributed to the fact that she was mostly remembering rather than actually observing.

(Hope you enjoyed?)


	2. begin at the beginning

**A/N: thank you all for the positive feedback on the first chapter QAQ I wasn't expecting such kindness, so here's another chapter! A bit slow-paced, this time. Also, I have some art for this fic up on my dA, ExileWrath.**

 **Summary: Inoichi Yamanaka is confused, and Raku starts small. Small plans.**

* * *

begin at the beginning

"-screaming for no reason, couldn't get a read-"

"Yamanaka-sama, do you know-"

Raku jerked to consciousness in the middle of the conversation, the sudden movement startling Inoichi and the nurse that he had been talking to, the Yamanaka clan head only narrowly missing getting his chin headbutted. "Bù kěyǐ!"

"Woah, steady there-" Inoichi struggled to hang on to the child before she fell down and hurt herself. "We're at the hospital, kid, it'll be o-"

"Bùnéng," Raku cried, squirming in order to escape, "Wǒ bùnéng jìn yīyuàn! Bà mā bù zhīdào - zhīdào le tāmen jiù huì bǎ wǒ kǎn sǐ!" he managed to overbalance and flip himself over one of Inoichi's arms, landing on the ground painfully, face-first. It was easy to ignore the pain of the impact, as the pain in his head hadn't abated yet. He doubted it would anytime soon. "Wǒ dāyìng nǐ, bùyòng dānxīn! Wǒ zhēn de bùyòng jìn yīyuàn!"

Before he could run away through the doors though, someone grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up high enough that his tiny five-year-old limbs couldn't reach the ground. Damn, he was missing his old body already. "What the hell are you screaming?"

It hit Raku like a sack of bricks. "Tā mā de, zhè jiù xiàng wǒ dì yī cì xué rìyǔ de shíhòu," he muttered. His mind had rerouted his usual language functions. Rather than the Japanese that "Sakura" had grown up with, or what he had learned in college, or the English of his youth, he had defaulted straight back to Mandarin, the language he had learned as a child.

"Wǒ de míngzì shì- Haruno Raku," he tried, the words coming out in the right language this time. Inoichi raised a very unimpressed eyebrow. "Sorry about that, uh, Yamanaka-san."

With the practiced patience of someone that had Seen Shit, "What were you trying to say?"

"My parents don't know I'm out at night, so I can't be admitted to the hospital," Raku explained with as much dignity as he could muster while hanging midair. "I'm fine, so I don't need to be admitted."

"One second, kid," Inoichi said, "You were screaming bloody murder for awhile there, and then you blacked out, and then woke up babbling. And now you're saying that you don't need to be hospitalized?" his tone was patient, the same voice he used to tell Ino to go to sleep.

Okay, well. Raku probably did need to be hospitalized, to make sure that the connection of the memories of his past life hasn't damaged his brain or anything. But that was beside the point. "I just _can't._ My parents don't know that I'm out at night! They'll kill me and okaa-san will say it's not proper and otou-san will get mad and agree with her and all my freedom will be gone and _I can't_." He didn't know how the parents of this life would react, actually, but in general it was safe to assume that it wouldn't be positive.

Well, there went Inoichi's assumption that the kid was from the red-light district. Shikaku would have a laugh if he heard. "Why would your-"

"Please, Yamanaka-san! I need to get home before my parents wake up or they'll-!" he looked around for a clock desperately, calming down the slightest at the sight of eleven-fifty on the wall. "Oh. It's not even midnight. I can get home by morning."

The sudden emotion switch made Inoichi feel torn between changing his grip on the kid to look her in the eye, or holding her as far away as possible. He'd dealt with enough people in his career to know that rapid emotion fluctuations never boded well. Even from a five-year-old. Especially from five-year-olds. "Look, kid," he began, the girl turning to look at him curiously, "If you say you have plenty of time to get home, how about we sit down and talk for a bit?" Feeling Raku start to tense up, Inoichi quickly added, "This is a hospital. They have quiet rooms aplenty. I want to know why you think you don't need to be admitted to the hospital, and a calmer environment would make that easier for you to argue your point, right?" Make the girl think Inoichi was on her side, or at least not entirely against her.

Raku regarded him warily. "... only if you help me sneak back into my house."

"Deal."

* * *

Admittedly, finding out why the kid was so against being admitted into the hospital was only part of why Inoichi wanted to have a private conversation. The other part was that he was... confused. Him, the leader of a clan of _literal mind-walkers_ , and the Head of Torture and Interrogation, confounded by a tiny kid as old as _his_ kid.

Admittedly, Inoichi, was curious as fuck.

Sitting down on a stool in a random hospital room (that the nurse that had been observing them had reluctantly lent) Inoichi watched as Raku (if that was really the kid's name) struggle onto another stool, and then a desk, sitting high enough that she was eye-level with him. _Interesting_. "So let's start with names,' he suggested. _Basics_.

A pause. "My name is Haruno Raku. But my parents named me Sakura."

"Sakura? A pretty little name for a little girl," Inoichi commented, thinking that it was safe to try to introduce commentary in the beginning, so that the kid wouldn't mind more questions as the conversation continued. Unfortunately not. "Why did you say your name is Raku, though?"

Her shoulders stiffened, and her fists clenched as she met Inoichi's eyes with a venomous glare that was much more intimidating than a normal child's glare. There was anger there, as if he had awoken some sort of old grudge. But he couldn't place what. "My name is _Raku,"_ she snapped. "Haruno Raku, Yamanaka-san. And I am a _boy_."

 _But you're wearing a dress, and you're very clearly a girl_ , Inoichi wanted to point out, but the set in her- his jaw made him hold his tongue. _Best go with the flow, if Raku insists that she's a boy, there's no harm in going along._ "I'm sorry, Raku-kun," Inoichi tried, watching what the next reaction would be.

Considering how surprisingly tight-lipped he was for a child, Inoichi was grateful that his body language was so expressive. Raku relaxed at the apology, fists loosening but not completely unclenching. "Apology accepted," he said. Strange wording. "What else do you want to know, then?"

A familiar topic to start with instead, then. " _Why_ exactly can't you go to the hospital?" he asked. A simple enough question- the amount of alarm which Raku had displayed upon the idea that his parents would find out about midnight walks rang uncomfortable alarms in Inoichi's head.

"I don't want my parents to find out that I sneak out. I'll get in trouble," Raku said flatly, mouth set in a line and eyes narrowed in a way that looked wrong on a five-year-old. "And besides, I don't need to be admitted. I'm _fine_."

Well, that avenue of questioning was clearly going to go in circles. Inoichi had met prisoners that were easier to read than this kid- then again, he wasn't exactly going full T&I investigation mode. And he wouldn't, because, well. Raku was _Ino's age._ "How are you so sure about that, Raku-kun? Also, who are your parents? What would they do if they found out?" At the same though, Inoichi sensed that referring to Raku by name rather than he would a normal child would make questioning much easier.

Raku ducked his head, swinging his legs as he gripped the edge of the desk. "Don't know. I just don't want them to know. Oka- Haha-ue is Haruno Mebuki, chichi-ue is Haruno Kaito. And I know my body. I know I'm fine." It occurred to Inoichi that Raku's entire pattern of speech was strange. And inconsistent. A switch from the normal "okaa-san" to formal "haha-ue" was... unusual. The way he spoke, as well. Slowly, carefully, testing each word on his tongue before speaking. An unexpectedly calculating child- and wary.

As for the parents, the names weren't unfamiliar. A few seconds of recollection and Inoichi easily flagged them as a husband-wife pair that sat on the Merchant Council. He resisted the urge to facepalm. Raku had the exact same shade of unnatural pink hair as his father. _Shikaku would really be laughing at me at this point,_ he thought mournfully. "Well, fair enough," he conceded, "Why do you sneak out and walk around at night, Raku-kun?"

The answer came out faster, this time. "I have a hard time sleeping at night," he explained, voice high and guileless. "And I like exploring! Exploring's fun. Seeing new people is fun! And all the shinobi are easier to spot at night, because most people are asleep except the people in Kabuki-chou."

 _Well_ , Inoichi thought grimly _, if his parents found out that their precious dau- child had gone to Kabuki-chou, no wonder he doesn't want them to find out._

Child of wealthy merchants, claimed to wander at night frequently, with odd speech patterns and wariness that wasn't normal in children. It had all the markings of either a genius, or a simply precocious as fuck kid. Inoichi was willing to bet on the latter, especially since the 'genius' label was generally reserved for the bright kids that blazed through the Shinobi Academy, not five-year-old pink-haired civilians. "Even if you think you're alright," Inoichi began, "the nurse doesn't think you're alright. I don't think you're very alright as well. I was there when you started screaming."

Raku visibly winced, eyes darting side-to-side. "What if I promised to come to the hospital in the morning?" he asked. "I can fake a headache and persuade haha-ue to take me to the hospital! Or pretend I'm super super sick." Back with the inconsistent speech. Inoichi almost wanted to wince too.

He looked at a clock on the wall, the hands pointing to 12:32. _I should get home soon, damn_. Standing up, he held out a hand to Raku, who carefully grabbed it and swung off the desk. Inoichi crouched down in front of the child, and held up his other hand, little finger extended. "Do you promise?"

Green eyes blinked at his hand, and then Inoichi, and then back, eyebrows descending to a very confused furrow. "Sticking out a pinky is rude," Raku said matter-of-factly.

 _What?_ "It's what my daughter does with her friends," Inoichi defended, feeling a bit foolish. "It's a pinky promise." He'd thought that a 'pinky promise' or whatever would mean more to a child than a verbal one, but that had apparently been a miscalculation.

Raku stared half a breath longer, before his grip on Inoichi's hand tightened and he bent over, erupting in laughter. "Oh my god-" he wheezed, "Oh my god, you were doing a pinky promise." He giggled more, sounding childish for possibly the first time since he'd woken up. He reached out and linked pinkies with Inoichi, shoulder's still shaking. "I promise I'll go to the hospital tomorrow, Yamanaka-san."

Something in the back of Inoichi's mind said that Raku was _humouring_ him, but for the sake of his dignity as an adult, he shoved it aside before standing up and walking out of the hallway with the kid.

The nurse manning at the front desk looked up upon hearing their footsteps, and her mouth tilted into a visible frown at the sight of Raku having apparently won the argument of not being admitted into the hospital. Before she could turn the acid Iryou-nin looks of doom of Inoichi in reprimand, Raku waved at her. "I'll be back in the morning with my parents!" he called, "But Yamanaka-san said I could go home for now if I promised to come back!"

Her frown became less severe, and she levelled her gaze down at Raku. "I work until noon, Haruno-san," she said, "And I better see you come in, or your parents will definitely know about you being here at two in the morning."

Raku's smile froze on his face and remained static until he and Inoichi were outside of the hospital. "Don't mess with iryou-nin," Inoichi advised abruptly. Raku laughed awkwardly, looking around the quiet streets of two AM Konoha.

"So, where's your house?"

* * *

"Motherfucking shit, I should've stayed there," Raku groaned as sunlight greeted him through the windows. He curled under his blankets, flopping his pillow over his eyes for good measure. _Looks like I don't need fake a headache, this hurts like a bitch._

"Sakura?" This life's mother called, knocking on the door. Raku ignored her, throbbing pain in his head overriding any considerations of pretending to be 'Sakura" for the Haruno family. "Sakura! It's time to eat breakfast!"

Mebuki stepped in the room, and Raku groaned. "Morning, okaa-san," he said wearily, squeezing his eyes shut as he sat up slowly, rolling back his covers at the same time. He could feel her eyes watching him as he fumbled off the bed, trailing his fingers against the surface to keep track of his movements.

"Sakura?" His mother repeated. "Honey, are you okay?" He cracked his eyes open to see her looking down at him, worry evident in her face.

"Yes, okaa-san," he replied, putting up the farce that everything was okay. She looked him over in concern before turning away and heading downstairs to the kitchen. Raku trailed behind her. _If it's just a headache, they won't see why I need to go to the hospital. I'll have to pretend that it's-_

That was the last thought he had before he went slipped down the stairs, foot sliding off the edge of a stair too far away for his tiny body to reach. Only his headache prevented him from cursing up a storm at the bottom of the steps, after the most painful five seconds so far of this life. "Okaa-san- otou-san-" he cried weakly, curling up and clutching his head, eyes shut tight with splitting pain. "It hurts-"

There was a moment of shock before his parents started rushing about, this life's father picking him up. "Is it a concussion?" He heard Kaito panic.

"I- we should check the hospital, dear!" Mebuki pressed, and Raku was faintly aware of the flurry of activity round him as the couple left the house, heading to the hospital as fast as possible.

He kept his eyes closed the whole time, clutching onto Kaito's shirt. Raku could hear the people around them alarmed by Sakura- his parent's haste, and he gripped more tightly. _They're not my parents_ , he thought idly, _they gave birth to this body, but this isn't my body._ He swallowed, hyperaware of how _small_ he was, in a child's body in a land that he'd dismissed as fictional so long ago. A land where Chinese Mandarin was incoherent babbling and there was _chakra_ and _shinobi_ and-

 _And no Mikhail_ , he realized before shoving the thought aside. He couldn't let himself think of Mikhail, not now, not when-

"Foolish girl," he heard a somewhat familiar voice say as someone extracted him from his new father's grasp. He was placed on something soft, and Raku could feel cloth and mattress underneath him. "I'm glad you kept your promise, though." Ah, it was the iryou-nin from last night.

"Where does it hurt?" another woman asked, "This is just a quick scanning jutsu to check for a concussion," a strange sort of sensation passing over his face. Raku cracked his eyes open to see someone with their hand glowing green in front of him.

"My head," he whispered. "I have a headache. And I was seeing double ever since I woke up, and I fell down the stairs because of it."

The nurse from the early morning gave her colleague a look. "This is the kid I told you came in passed out in Yamanaka Inoichi's arms, and then woke up babbling." Raku was thankful to see that his parents weren't in the room when she said that.

"I'm Doctor Shiratori," the woman in front of Raku said after giving the nurse a passing glance of acknowledgement. "Only your head hurts? Your parents said you took quite a tumble."

Raku would have nodded if he didn't feel like his skull was going to explode from inside. "Just my head," he repeated.

The doctor frowned. "No concussion, but there's an abnormality there," she muttered. The nurse penned something down. "We'll have to run some more tests. You should rest here in the meantime."

"Wha-"

"I'll go talk to your parents now, okay?"

Raku was left blinking as he was gently nudged into lying down on the bed, the doctor and nurse walking out, turning off the lights as they left.

* * *

Jin An hated hospitals. White walls and pale desaturated green curtains and the stench of antiseptic and disinfectant with an underlying scent of disease and dying. They were a reminder of the ones he cared about who had died there. Jin An himself had never had to stay at the hospital, but he had... visited enough.

Raku hated hospitals as well, on principle. Except now he was... a patient. And _five years old_ , so the doctors never consulted him about anything, just his parents. It grated on his nerves, being dismissed as a child, even though it made sense. Forced bed rest didn't help either, since that meant he had free time.

Too much free time meant too much thinking time.

Mikhail was always his first thought. Whenever they had gone together to a hospital, the pain was... eased, by Mikhail's presence, by the leaning of a head on his shoulder, hands clasped together, a strength in having someone with him making things... more bearable.

There was no Mikhail now.

The monitors beeped often, a tiny sound that sometimes rang too loud in the front of Raku's skull, and he would reach out to grab someone's hand for reassurance, but of course there was never one. Well, sometimes there would be "his father" or "his mother" but their hands weren't callused at the fingertips, thin and elegant like Mikhail's, and he couldn't delude himself into pretending that they were anything like Mikhail's. Wouldn't, because Mikhail wasn't here, and-

He squeezed his hands into fists, hating how small they were.

He hated everything, if he had to be honest. Hated this body, hated the lack of- _him_ , hated that he knew barely anything of this world, hated being a child, hated-

Why the hell had he ever said yes in the first place to this deal?

 _I killed myself because that life wasn't worth living without Mikhail,_ Raku thought distantly. _This world doesn't have any worth, either._

The deity. With eighty-four eyes and six wings and a voice straight out of the world's worst sound collection. The deity, and a conversation that he hadn't _remembered anything-_

He didn't know when he had started screaming, just that he only stopped after healers rushed into his room and knocked him unconscious.

* * *

He came to again on his third day in the hospital; Haruno Mebuki and Kaito were in the room.

 _I should call them my parents,_ Raku mused.

But Wu Jin An's parents had been... not worth thinking about, in those last seven years of his life. The happiest ones, because he had been hundreds of miles away from them and with- he shook his head, backtracking.

His parents hadn't been the worst. Or the best. But they had raised him, given him food and education and had cared. There had been... conflict about his gender, and his transition, but he had loved them enough to spare them the pain of watching him change and left. He wondered how they would react to his death. Or if they would find out. They would miss him, even if he had been physically gone for seven years. He had missed them, sometimes.

He didn't know what to think of the two people that he would be expected to call his parents now. Mebuki seemed to care much about propriety and appearances, in wanting Sakura to be a good daughter. Raku pitied her, for getting him instead. Kaito seemed much more laid-back, but the memories Raku had of before he had "woken up", so to say, had all the signs that the man was much more serious than how he presented himself to "Sakura" usually. Both were fairly normal in terms of disposition, he supposed.

But, no matter how kind or strict they were, Raku wouldn't be able to call them his parents. After all, they weren't the ones who had shaped him into the person he had become. Haha-ue and chichi-ue they'd remain. At some point in his musing, they had been called out of the room by Doctor Shiratori.

The care that they exhibited was... nice, though. It was strange to receive kindness from people other than Mik-

 _Shit._ He'd been trying not to think about him, because thinking about Mikhail made Raku's heart ache, because even if this was a new life and a new name and a new body, he was still twenty-seven. He was still Wu Jin An, and he had _killed himself for a reason._

"They made me make a deal which I was practically blindfolded in," he muttered, "They knew-"

Wu Jin An had died for a reason. Mikhail. He hadn't remembered that reason when he had encountered the being with eighty-four eyes, and had agreed to- to this. To living a life without Mikhail. To saving a goddamn world without the one person that he had lived and died for.

Raku would have cried, if he was able to. "They knew I would have refused if I had remembered."

In the face of human feelings, gods and higher beings will obviously place the fate of a world as higher priority. Which made sense, of course, but Raku didn't have to like it.

 **We expect you to save the world. 'Smiles and sunshine,' as you say, are not required for that.** The being had said.

"Well fuck you, a female body isn't required either," Raku snarled to any asshole higher being that could be watching. He sat up in the hospital bed, looking around the room, and his eyes settled on his reflection in the window.

 _They want me to save the world. Staying a girl isn't required, just like smiles and sunshine._ He thought savagely. _I transitioned once. Even if this world doesn't have the same medicine as I'm used to, I can transition again._

Save the world, and he'd get a ticket to retry his old life. Another opportunity to live with Mikhail again. Maybe even... prevent his death.

"Haruno Sakura" was supposed to _help_ the "Chosen One" save the world, though, not do it herself. Well, that just made things easier. He'd find Uzumaki Naruto and... look after him. Establish a rapport, act as an older sibling figure to the orphaned main character with a tragic backstory. Start as early as possible, because the smallest experiences as a child would influence adult actions greatly. The trick would be finding him, though. Konoha was a big city, and Raku's body was five-years-old and tired easily.

 _That's out of the question for the moment, then. I'll have to start small._ Casting the thought of finding Naruto to the side, Raku continued to stare at his reflection. Green eyes stared back- (Mikhail had green eyes)- and his hair was currently a bob in a horrendous shade of pink. Goddamnit.

Raku hated pink.

 _Start small. So I'll start with this goddamn hair._

* * *

 **Extra** :

"So, everything is okay, Haruno-san," the doctor told his parents. Raku remained carefully curious, as literally everyone in the room was expecting the proper reactions of "Haruno Sakura". "It seems that there's some abnormal growth in Sakura-chan's brain, though. The front of her brain- we call it the prefrontal cortex- has developed much more than it should in a child. Which is why her head was hurting so much. The migraines should have subsided, but we'd suggest that you keep her indoors for a few more days. Don't want to risk anything. And if the headaches come back, or if any head trauma happens, please have a healer check on it, okay?"

Mebuki and Kaito expressed relief and agreement, firm iterations of, "Did you hear that, Sakura? No playing outside for a few days, okay?" and "What does the abnormal growth mean?" passing through their lips.

Doctor Shiratori had no proper answer as to a cause- if anything came up, she assured them, she would let them know. But Raku knew the cause- his memories fully returning to him. The prefrontal cortex mostly developed in early adult years, after puberty, and was associated with decision-making and critical thinking.

If Raku had been more anime than he already was, he would have been struck by lightning with the realization. _No wonder Mikhail complained so much about the Naruto characters' decisions,_ he mentally groaned _, they're all idiot teenagers with poor decision-making skills._

Hopefully, he'd be able to make Naruto better than that.

Shit.

Raku wanted a refund on this deal again.

* * *

 **AN: would people prefer regular month-and a half updates with shorter chapters, or longer chapters with sporadic updates?**

 **the dialogue he was saying in Mandarin translates to this:**  
"Not okay, I can't be admitted to the hospital, my parents have no idea- they'll kill me if they find out!"  
"It'll be okay, I promise! I don't need to be admitted!"  
"Ah shit, this is just like when I was learning Japanese for the first time,'  
"I am-"

 **Sticking a pinky out at someone is apparently rude in Chinese culture, the equivalent to Western culture sticking up the middle finger, hence Raku was very confused at the pinky-promise.**

 **Also! Yes, Mikhail/Wu Jin An was gay as fuck. Any pairing involving Raku + a guy is slash. Just to make that clear.**

 **(reviews are kindly appreciated)**


	3. who am I? ah, that's the great question

***pulls self out of grave*** **another chapter has arrived yeah. Due to depression and the hectic times of the semester ending, as well as a really foul review, it took awhile for me to get this chapter out, sorry. shorter chapter than usual, but short update is better than no update?**

 **idk if I mentioned, but haha-ue and chichi-ue are like the super formal versions of okaa-san and otou-san. Raku uses them with Kaito and Mebuki to distance them from the parents he had in his past life.**

 **Also, holy shit: Raku is male. Raku identifies as male, and uses he/him pronouns. The only time this fic addresses him with female pronouns is when other characters that don't know are addressing him. Please do not use she/her pronouns to describe Raku. **

**Chapter summary: Introducing Yamanaka Ino. No Raku, you're not getting a break. Now have hyperactive five year old girl that wants to be friends with the weird kid her dad told her about.**

 **Raku shouldn't have said he was bored.**

* * *

who am I? ah, that's the great puzzle

"My name is Haruno Raku, my name is Haruno Raku," was what he mumbled under his breath when no one was looking, no one was listening. Haruno Raku is five, and young, and has never fallen in love, and lives in a world with shinobi and ninja and an eternal state of cold war. Jin An was twenty-seven, and he had loved, loved fiercely, loved brightly, and burnt away because of it. Ironic that he had been blazing-bright and then reborn, like some bird cursed to be a phoenix- with all of the pain and so little reward.

He has to compartmentalize. There's no time, (he has plenty of time, sitting in his bed, but he ignored that) to think of Mikhail now, no time to reflect on the past and grieve. No room to grieve, even- Mikhail has no grave here, nowhere that Raku could pay respects. No time, either, because Raku knew he was teetering on his emotions, that if he _let_ himself remember too much, dwell too long, he would make a mistake of the past. And that chance of another rebirth, another chance at his own life would be for nothing.

"I am Haruno Raku," he said again, firmer this time as he shoved all of his grief and love and joy he remembered (that he doubt he'd find again in this life) to the side, deep underneath layers of dead apathy and a list of things he needed to do in this life. Things that he could occupy his time with, so that those emotions wouldn't break from the depths again.

He breathed once, twice, and his tears stopped as Jin An was shoved away and Haruno Raku carefully _didn't think about it._

Raku wished that he had read the Naruto manga, not just listened to Mik- not listened to people rant about it and terrible characterization and terrible endings. He had very little clue about how to even start on his list of "helping Naruto save the world". Item number one was finding Naruto, obviously, but it was easier said than done, because Konoha was big, and it didn't help that Raku's legs were short.

... or that he still had occasional migraines and his parents have been keeping him in the house, the doctor's order of strict bedrest hampering any of Raku's freedom.

* * *

"Can I go out today?" he asked, an edge of a child's petulance in his voice as he looked at Mebuki with all the pleading he could muster. He hadn't even been able to sneak out lately, what with his parents checking in him often in the middle of the night to make sure his headaches weren't acting up again.

The woman looked him over, sighing before kneeling in front of him and patting him. "I'm sorry, Sakura. Doctor's orders. Just another week, and then we'll go see Shiratori-sensei, okay?"

The thought of another week of staying indoors in a world where there was jack shit to do indoors other than housekeeping or sleeping make Raku want to scream. "But haha-ue, I'm _bored_." He stressed the word as much as possible. "There's nothing to do! And I can't go and play with anyone when I'm stuck _here_."

Mebuki pinched the cloth of her skirt. "Don't worry, Sakura. I'll do something about it, okay? In the meantime, just another week! Everything will be better soon and you'll be able to go outside again."

 _I am neither Sakura nor pleased._ Raku mentally grumbled, but nodded curtly, in assent, not expecting anything. Mothers usually didn't live up to expectations.

* * *

Except, it seemed that Haruno Mebuki did live up to expectations. Well, then again, Raku hadn't had any expectations, so her having done anything positive would have been a surprise.

"Sakura, we have guests! Wear your green dress, okay?" Raku looked up from his book with a puzzled expression as she popped into his bedroom that evvening. "The family that owns the flowershop down by the corner has a little girl around your age too!" She pulled out aforementioned green dress and gave it to Raku. "You said you wanted someone to play with, so I hope you and little Ino-chan get along."

"Hah?" Raku barely managed to verbalize his confusion before a kettle-whistle came from the kitchen. Mebuki's eyes widened and she bustled out to tend to whatever food she was making and Raku was left with a green dress in his hands.

Raku hated dresses, but unfortunately he didn't have much freedom of choice at this point in this life. He sighed and reluctantly shrugged it on, pondering Mebuki's words. "Flowershop at the corner? Ino?"

A shudder went through his body as his brain froze in realization. _Isn't Yamanaka Ino the name of a Naruto character? Her and Sakura were childhood friends. What the fuck what the fuck I did not calculate this- wait that means the Yamanaka that saw my breakdown was..._

 _Her... dad._

 _Fuck I hope he didn't tell her about me fuck fuck I hope to the seven hells Yamanaka Inoichi didn't tell her about the weird kid he saw- wait, we met at a bar, he wouldn't have told her, right? Right? Fuuuuu-_

"Sakura!" his mother yelled. "They're here!"

 _Fuck I should have just wallowed in the silence._

Raku slipped down the stairs as quietly as possible as he heard five voices twining together in greeting, the most cheerful of them all greeting him the moment he saw them. "Hi!" Short platinum-blonde, pupil-less blue eyes, and the same height as this body. "I'm Yamanaka Ino!"

Raku pasted on a practiced smile that he hadn't worn since he was twenty. He'd sworn that he would never have to wear that smile again, but things never liked to go as planned. "I'm Haruno Sakura!" he said back, holding his hand out for a greeting. Ino shook it enthusiastically, but before she could say anything else, they were both ushered to the dining room.

"It's so nice to see you again, Mebuki-chan!" a green-eyed woman with no pupils and signature Yamanaka blond hair hugged his mother in greeting as they sat down.

"Kana-chan, it's only been a week!" Raku averted his eyes from the adults. He was used to them in all their formality and all their distance and all their business dealings, so watching them behaving as anything other than his parent was strange, almost. "-this is Sakura, my daughter... Sakura?" his mother nudged him and he smoothed over his confusion with the same polite practiced smile he had given Ino.

"It's nice to meet you, Yamanaka-san, Yamanaka-san," he said, bowing quickly to Kana and Inoichi before taking his seat next to Ino. Inoichi himself hadn't offered any greeting, watching him intently. _It looks like he's not going to tell them about the hospital. Thank god._

Dinner was over quickly, Mebuki and Kana discussing something about flowers and fabric and a half dozen other topics, Kaito carefully engaging Inoichi about some meeting. Raku, though, was tense, having said nothing to Ino. ot out of rudeness, but rather because she hadn't said anything to him outside of that short introduction.

 _Anything_. She occasionally got scolded for messy eating by her parents, and complimented the food, but other than that, she had just... _stared_ at him. Just like her dad. Two sets of pupilless blue eyes watching your every move was unsettling, to say the least.

"Thank you for the food, haha-ue. May I be excused?" Raku set his chopsticks down and looked at the adults expectantly.

"Me too!" Ino burst out, chopsticks clattering. Her parents looked at her indulgently, and after a nod and a suggestion from Mebuki to go to the backyard, she trailed after him, still not saying a single word.

Pushing the back door open, Raku shuffled on some slippers and gestured vaguely around the garden. "It's not much." It was a decorative rock garden, lined with pebbles and occasional shrubs poking up, as well as the single tree that Raku used to sneak out, other bushes lining the fence. He waited for Ino to run off and grab her outdoor shoes before walking to the tiny patch of grass around the tree.

He had resigned himself to her staring at this point, so the, "What's your _name_?" nearly startled him. "Are you Sakura-chan or are you Raku-kun?"

 _Fuck you, Inoichi._

* * *

"Soooo?" Ino drew out the word, poking the other child. "Tou-san said that Haruno-san had a kid my age called Raku-kun! But you said _Sakura_ , so am I supposed to call you Sakura-chan or Raku-kun?"

"Raku," he whispered, eyes darting about. "My name is Raku. And please, keep your voice down. My parents don't know."

Ino sat down across from Raku-kun on the grass, frowning in confusion. "But they're your parents, how come they don't know your name? And how come you look like a girl if you told my tou-san you're a boy? And why do you-"

The boy-that-looked-like-a-girl turned his head away. "They don't know because they named me Sakura, but I named myself Raku," he answered, cutting off her questions with an odd sort of smile on his face. Ino didn't like it. "So you can't call me Raku when my parents are around, okay? And I look like a girl because this body is a girl's body, but inside," he tapped his head, "I'm a boy."

"I don't get it. How come you named yourself and why do you say you're a boy inside?" Ino fired back, curiousity raging. She'd been full of questions ever since tou-san came home last week and told kaa-san about the very strange child he saw at the hospital, and even more curious when he told her to look out for a Haruno Raku. And tonight her kaa-san had made arrangements to eat with the Haruno family, and tou-san had gotten surprisingly quiet when he saw Raku, so even though Raku-kun had said his name was Sakura, Ino knew he had to be the boy that had confused tou-san. And no one could confuse tou-san! Well, except Shikaku-jii when they played shogi, or Chouza-jii- Ino shook her head and went back to staring at Raku-kun.

He was looking at her very hard. Ino wondered if his hair was normal, and then remembered that his dad had the same color hair too. "Well?" she demanded. "Why-"

"I named myself because Sakura is a _girl's_ name and I'm _not a girl_ ," Raku-kun hissed, eyes dark. "And my parents don't know because I don't want them to know. It's a secret. You can keep a secret, right, Ino-chan?" he looked to the side again, like he was afraid someone would hear. "You and your tou-san are the only ones that know, and I don't want my parents knowing, okay?"

 _A secret_. Ino grinned from ear to ear. He wanted her to keep his secret! Not even his parents knew it. "I won't tell anyone!"

There was something strange about his smile again when he reached out a finger to her. "Pinky promise?" Ino quickly linked hers to his, and they shook once, and it was almost as if all of Raku-kun's oddities fell away after that.

"What's living in a flowershop like?" he asked. "Do you help out? Do you like flowers, even?"

She'd grown up surrounded by flowers, how could she not? "I love flowers! Do you?"

"Flowers are... nice," Raku-kun said slowly, "Are you going to take over their flowershop when you're older then?"

"Nope!"

A look of surprise flashed across his face, and he tilted his head to the side. "Why not?"

 _Raku-kun is a bit silly,_ Ino thought. _Or maybe he just doesn't know? Well, he is a civilian..._ "I'm going to be like tou-san! I'm gonna be clan head and head of T &I just like him, serving Konoha!"

"Sounds fake but okay," Raku-kun muttered.

"What?"

He looked abruptly guilty for a moment. "I mean, well. How come you want to serve Konoha like your dad?" _Ohh, civilian mentality,_ she realized.

"Because shinobi are the military force of the Elemental Nations, and the Yamanaka clan have a long history of being shinobi." Ino remembered the talks her father would give to some cousins that didn't want to join the Academy. "We have unique clan jutsu that no other clan can mimic, not even the Uchiha and their Sharingan, and since we have the talent to be great useful shinobi serving Konoha, why shouldn't we?" Ino brightened a bit, "And tou-san is a great shinobi, so I want to be like him, just as good as him!"

 _"_ _Indoctination at it's finest,"_ something strange came from his mouth, sounds that didn't quite sound like any words Ino knew. She'd have to ask tou-san later. "But isn't the death rate high?" Raku-kun asked.

Ino shrugged. "I saw one of my cousins get her name carved on the Memorial Stone last week." Raku-kun flinched. "But even if we do die, at least that means we died doing our best, right? Not just doing... I don't know, what do civilians do?"

It was Raku-kun's turn to shrug. His expression was a bit odd, though, like he was testing her- it looked weird.

"And if I'm a shinobi I get to learn all the clan jutsu!" Ino added, "Like mind-walking and body-switching and stuff! And when I get older I'll get to join the Academy, and learn how to channel chakra and use kunai right because tou-san won't teach me until I've joined the Academy, and- what's so funny?"

Raku-kun hid his mouth behind his hand, but his eyes betrayed his laughter. "You have everything set out for you, huh?"

"Why are you laughing?" Ino persisted.

He waved his hand, almost in apology. "I'm sorry, Ino-chan. It's just, you're five, and you're talking about growing up to be a hired killer and you're so excited about it."

Very little of that sentence made sense. The words made sense, but the way he phrased it and his tone made it hard to interpret. 'You're five too," she shot back.

An emotion she couldn't identify flashed in his eyes. "I'm six," he said.

"So, you're not that much older than me. And it's not funny that I'm going to be clan head and head of T&I and follow tou-san's footsteps!"

He smiled, lips curling up at the corners as he fought down another laugh. "It's not funny, that's why it's so funny!"

Ino stared at him. "I don't get it," she said flatly.

His eyes were shining with laughter too, now. "Just because you know one of my secrets, Ino-chan, doesn't mean you know them all. There's a lot of things that you won't get when it comes to me."

Ino couldn't wait to get home and tell her dad so he could figure out what was confusing her so much. "Maybe you should come to the Academy with me!" When stuck, change subjects.

His laughter stopped, and he tilted his head to the side again. "What? Why?"

"We're friends, right? Raku-kun." She wore a sly smile, eyes dancing with mirth at knowing a secret his parents didn't get to know. And if he trusted her with the secret that big, then they had to be friends. "And... I don't know, I think you could be a shinobi too! Even if you do have some funny civilian ideas."

Raku-kun smiled, and it _felt_ genuine- as if all the smiles Ino had seen up to now had been fake. "You have to get your dad to persuade my parents to let me enter the Academy though, Ino-chan."

"I will-"

"Ino!" the children's attention was jerked from each other to Ino's mother standing on the back porch. "We're leaving now!"

"But-" Ino didn't want to go yet, she wanted to know more about Raku-kun and all his secrets!

Raku-kun stood up and offered her a hand. "It's okay, Ino-chan!" he chirped, smile gone and something fake there instead. "We can meet again! I think your mom will let you come over to play if you want, and haha-ue wants me to make friends, so she'd be happy if you came over again!"

 _Do you really mean that?_ Ino wondered, at the strangeness and the smile. "Really?"

"Of course!" she glimpsed a bit of that other smile, just for a moment. "We're friends now, aren't we?"

* * *

"Hey, Ino-chan, do you want to know another secret of mine?" Raku-kun asked a month later as he held up a hand full of cards. He put down two on the pile in between them, "I put down two queens."

"BS," Ino fired back. Raku-kun smirked, and flipped the cards to reveal two queens. Ino grumbled as she added the stack to her hand, and then put down some cards. "Three kings. What secret?"

"Pass. I'm looking for someone. Do you want to help me? One ace."

Ino pouted that he hadn't called BS She wondered what BS meant anyways. "Pass. Who are you looking for, and why are you looking for them? Two twos."

"I'm looking for a boy with whisker-marks. On his cheeks, and blond hair and blue eyes. He our age!"

"Why?" the description felt familiar.

"Promise me you won't tell anyone?"

"Promise."

"I'm looking for him because when I saw him, he looked very sad."

"Sad?" Ino looked up from her cards to a stone-faced Raku-kun.

"Sad like I was before I got you as a friend."

Ino wanted to call BS. But she didn't see any reason to- Raku-kun would give her a real reason, later, when they found this sad boy, probably. He was strange like that.

* * *

 **To clarify: last two scenes are in Ino's perspective. Wanted to try to relay how confusing Raku is compared to other kids, and how he confuses other kids. And yeah, he taught her how to play Bullshit (card game) because he has very loose morals. And hey, good practice for trying to catch lies.**

 **the "that sounds fake but okay" line is 100% a meme reference and dedicated to meme-loving shit exocara**

 **(quoted italicized words are spoken in English btw)**

 **Reviews are appreciated, I'm one of those people that thrive off of feedback.**


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